Is there some penalty to staying at sea for a long time beside fuel and such?
 

I'm a bit new to this series.
Do you lose renown if you take too long to complete a patrol?
How long (in days) should a normal sortie at sea take?

Beside fuel and such, is there any consequences to staying at sea for a long time?

Thanks in advance for your future answers. :)

welcome aboard firsttime poster!
 

Thanks. I'm loving the game so far.

There are CRIPPLING penalties to staying at sea for too long. The only time you are offered upgrades to your boat and crew members get medals is in port after ending a cruise. So if you want to pilot an S-boat with no radar in 1945, just stay at sea all the time refitting and never ending your cruise.

If you want upgrades, new boats, increased crew proficiency and the like the way to do it is complete your mission then promptly return to port and end your cruise.

Completing missions and ending cruises is the only way you progress in SH4.

I only wanted to know because i hate rushing stuff.
Of course i'll go back to port to upgrade.

Some missions do have a time limit on the objective. Closely read your "orders" when you get them. Especially the "Lifeguard Duty" missions have specified dates for your boat to be "on station" for the mission. A few others do too, such as some of the photo recons. As far as a renonwn "penalty", a couple of the mods do that, but I don't think stock does. However, a "failed" mission objective does go on your permanent service record, and will be used against you in your court martial... :03: :salute:

In game, generally, there isn't any negative consequence to staying on patrol longer. RR and propbeanie have some good points to follow. If you continually refit and stay out too long, the save game files will become too large. When that happens, the game won't run correctly. The files could even become corrupted. In real life, patrols were around 30 days and most of us use that as a guide and return to home port. I return when fuel is low or out of torpedos.

Ooooooo I forgot about that one. That could be the reason I've had maybe two corrupt saves in five years. Yeah, I'd call a corrupt save a penalty....:har:

I would say food shortage.. but that's not nodded!!

:arf:
Keltos

I would say food shortage.. but that's not modded!!

:arf:
Keltos

It is neither nodded nor modded!:har:

You can tell he hasn't had his supper...

It's because of the food shortage.

New Question, can you end a patrol without having completed all objective?

For example, my order were to sink merchants shipping but i only found warships so i sank them but I'm running low on torpedoes so can i just end the patrol?

Will it lead me to a loss of reputation?

No, long as you sink ships you score points and continue in promotion in the game. Game can do strange things at times, once I damn near sunk the entire jap navy and came back to port with a whooping 99% damage....obvious not too realistic... I didn't think I could make it home, because I couldn't dive. I was demoted to a lessor class sub ....with about 200K tons sunk, lol